BEGINNERS!! LOWER REPS FOR HIGHER GAINS!!
“Movements or exercises that do not give the muscles the required resistance, but are the kind that involve a great number of repetitions, never break down any tissue, to speak of. These movements involve a forcing process that cause the blood to swell up the muscles, and simply pump them up.”
-George F. Jowett, The Key to Might and Muscle, 1926
I’m often confronted with questions about “how many repetitions should i be doing if I’m trying to…..” (build mass, lean out,ect) and the answer i give is often counter to what these people have been fed in the larger publications that are available on your news stand or larger commercial fitness sites.
Now this information that i sharing here is really based more towards the beginner/novice fitness enthusiast looking to establish a solid foundation on which to build upon and there are tons of variables that we can factor in when you’ve gained the experience needed to do so but what i will tell you from my own experience is to allow yourself time to learn and be a novice and don’t rush to gain “false progress”. When i teach Muay Thai i always joke with my students about allowing themselves to be bad at something for a little while and enjoy the learning process. This information here i will put under the same category.
Low reps training is superior to High rep when it comes to building muscle, and gaining power in “non-scientifically enhanced” athletes and lifters largely due to providing the needed overload of the musclulo-skeletal system and requiring the CNS (central nervous system) to have to adapt and utilize a higher number of motor units.The term motor units refers to the actual amount of muscle fibers being recruited by the “motor neurons”, the higher number of motor units recruited the more power we can generate per contraction of a particular muscle. Now this isn’t always in correlation to “size”. a person can have huge muscles but still not be able to generate force optimally. In this we often here the complaint, not to sound chauvinistic often from women “i don’t want to get BIG!!” Size and strength are not always indicative of each other and to put it plain and simple, WEAK DOESN’T WORK!! I have several female clients that way anywhere between 115lb to 135lb who are able to deadlift there body weight plus for 5 repetitions and in all honest because women tend to have better fine motor skills than men they achieve gains quicker then my male clients……. o.k., they also listen and take direction a lot better as well.
Now anyone who has trained or knows me understands that i’m a big believer in Pareto’s 80/20 principle and how it applies to fitness. In this I’m simply saying that 80% of your gains and progress are derived from 20% of your movements. As humans we have 4 basic movement substrates at our disposal, we can run, jump, climb and crawl basing or exercises around these let’s see what we have.
- Run / Jump- Squat- maximizing the ability to transfer power from your hips and legs into the floor under you.
- Run/Jump- Deadlift- maximizing the ability to extend your hips and posterior chain again to transfer that power through the floor.
- Climb- Pull Up- being able to recruit enough power from the torso (latisimus dorsi/ rhomboids).in order to elevate your body
- Crawl- Push up- Although this may seem like a way to simple of an exercise it is all to often that i see this one done with bad form. in order to really do a solid push up it requires that that whole body work in unison to stabilize as well as produce motion. I personally believe that the bench press is a secondary motion and tend not to prioritize it in my own programming. you may think different and that’s all good.
Now using these for basic motions you have the makings of a dynamite training program. i know that a lot of you might be thinking”where are the bi-cep curls, leg extensions, and lateral deltoid raises??” Again those are secondary and even in my opinion tertiary movements and i like i said 80/20 rule applies so we only want to get into the multi joint movements that are going to require more muscle groups effect our bodies in the desired fashion.
5X5 TRAINING
This concept in training is one of the best and most fundamental there is. is yields relatively quick gains and as you are not training to “failure” there is a lower risk of injury. Firstly you don’t want to just dive into doing your 85% 1 rm (85% of your one estimated one rep maximum is what you should be able to do for 5 repetitions) without a proper warm up so i would suggest that you do 2 warm up sets at 65% 1 rm at 12 repetitions, these are exactly that “warm up sets” your are priming your CNS to do a specific task so they should not be strenuous. between the warm up sets i suggest 2 minutes rest in which i also suggest you do some kind of movement work to keep your mobility and flexibility, again this should not be strenuous.
once you gotten the warm up sets finished you should increase your rest period to a minimum of 3 minutes allowing for proper recuperation so that every seth you feel strong. Again, i cannot stress enough that each rep should be solid with good form and you should not go to failure. When i use this method on myself i tend to do 2 sessions per week but that is also because my priorities are usually Muay thai or Jiu Jitsu so they are my focus but if you wanted to do 1 movement 5-6 days a week you could do that for a period and get significant gains but keep in mind that what you’re doing in the gym is only the set up for the important stuff done during rest and recuperation.
Again, i here some of you saying “WOW! that’ a lot of time to dedicate to just one exercise!!” it’s only a small amount of time in the gym and considering that what you do outside the gym is actually going to have a larger effect on your results it’s well worth training your body in this manor. I’ve had awesome results with clients from only 2 movements in the whole session for 6 to sometimes 10 weeks. My clients have gotten stronger,leaner, and more importantly have not gotten injured in the process which is very important.
i really hope this helps some of you and again, if you have questions feel free to hit me up. If i don’t know the answer then WE will find it together and we both get to learn!!
DO AWESOME THINGS!!!





